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Dennis the Menace, 11/18/16

There are few things more menacing in this world than basically saying “Enh, what if our son is just stupid?” right in front of him at dinner! It’s a really nice touch for Dennis to be staring dumbly up at his dad while he says it, letting a big strand of drool dribble down his lips, as if to play it up, make them feel bad for not underestimating or overestimating him, but for estimating him exactly right.

The Lockhorns, 11/18/16

Not sure why I found this Pokémon reference so much funnier than yesterday’s in Beetle Bailey. I guess it’s because I blame Beetle Bailey being extremely late to the joke on the Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC staff, whereas here I think it’s supposed to be Leroy himself behind on the times. “Uh, Loretta, uh, I’m here at this bar drunk on a weekday and I didn’t tell you where I was because of [rummages around brain, stumbles upon a thing he heard about on TV once] the Pokemon game.” (Please imagine this dialogue being read in an affectless monotone for maximum effect.)

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/7/16

Haha, wait, so Frankie, Darrin’s terrible bio-dad who raped Lisa when they were teens and returned to Westview to peddle some reality show only to be driven away by everyone’s righteous indignation, now works for DMZ, a gossip website so non-notorious that its employees have to keep reminding each other what it is? And now he’s going to ruin Cindy and Mason’s relationship by posting out-of-context photos of Mason and his comely young co-star? Sure, why not! There are only a limited number of truly bad people in the Funkyverse, so they have to work hard at doing all the bad things needed to keep everyone unhappy.

Spider-Man, 10/7/16

“Here he is. Tied up and immobile, right in front of you. I didn’t move him there in the middle of that sentence or anything. I wasn’t even standing in front of him. It’s … pretty weird you didn’t notice him before I pointed him out to you?”

Blondie, 10/7/16

The only thing Dagwood likes more than micromanaging his daughter’s sexuality is getting a sweet deal on an awesome high-end car.

Dennis the Menace, 10/7/16

Dennis recognizes that school’s real purpose is not to educate citizens, but to serve as a model of the regulated social order in which they’ll be embedded their whole lives. He’s truly menacing … to the established power structure!

Lockhorns, 10/7/16

Suddenly aware of capitalism’s enervating effects on wage slaves like her husband, Loretta will now take her place as the sarcastic, heavy-lidded Marianne of the new revolution.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/7/16

♬ It’s a montage ♬ a document-signing montage ♬ you gotta love a montage ♬ this process would’ve taken six to eight weeks worth of comics if we didn’t do a montage ♬

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The Lockhorns, 9/22/16

It’s actually pretty complicated trying to figure out how old someone is in a legacy comic strip, because you have to juggle a variety of narrative, cultural, and personal cues. Take the title hell-couple in the Lockhorns: they’re a long-time married couple still of working age, so probably no younger than 35 and no older than 55. That’s a span I’m right in the middle of! The seem older to me, because I’ve been reading The Lockhorns on and off since I was a child, plus their character design has been more or less set since they debuted almost 50 years ago, but today’s Leroy Lockhorn, the one who coexists with up-to-the-minute hipster stereotypes like our barista here, came of age in the 1960s at the very earliest. He has never sent or received a telegram in his life. And if he’s like literally every 35-to-55-year-old person I know, he sends text messages all the time. Basically Loretta can’t turn her back on him for more than 15 seconds before he starts just being a dick to someone for no reason.

Mark Trail, 9/22/16

At last, we’ve found out the relevance of this island makeout session from two years ago (strip time)/eleven weeks ago (real time): this couple brought invasive fire ants with them, as passengers on the firewood they burned to warm their writhing bodies. Fortunately, the U.S. Department of Agriculture keeps a meticulous log of the movement of every vessel everywhere on the seas, and was able to track down the culprits. After twenty hours of interrogation in a black-site USDA detention center in an unnamed Balkan country, our nautical lovebirds confessed to their woodcrime and will, after a tearful hour-long self-criticism session on TV, be sent to the labor camps where all Invasive Species Enablers are detained indefinitely until the War On Gross Bugs finally ends in victory.